Tuesday, March 20, 2012

History Mystery Solved: Where in DC is this House?

The History Mystery House: Where in Washington is it?

This entry on a history mystery house was a tough case to crack. I obtained the pictures of a stone house
located somewhere in Washington, DC from an online auction that originally
appeared on a single page of the August 23, 1923 edition of Architectural
Forum. The only clue I had was that it
was the home of Charles J. Cassidy, Esq.

Washington Post, Feb 24, 1907

Normally that would result in a rather easy investigation into the City
Directories about the time the magazine was published. The problem was that two different addresses
we found for Cassidy no longer existed: First, 3821 Michigan Avenue, NE and
then later, 1063 Michigan Avenue, NE, somewhere near Perry Street.

And, another hiccup: Cassidy was a builder who completed over 120
buildings and houses in Washington, DC, many of them for Catholic University. So, was this his house, or was it built for
someone else? I began to narrow down a
few of the known addresses where he built houses in Washington, but grew
tiresome when I Googled about two dozen of them which were obviously not the
stone house pictured.

I even drove Michigan Avenue looking for the house to no avail. Who could think that a significant house made
of solid Potomac Bluestone could be torn down less than 90 years after it was
constructed? Even the trim was composed
of white marble, and the roof made of shingle tile. This house was built to last.

So, I turned to researching a bit more about Cassidy. His obituary on January 1, 1941 revealed that
he had been born about 1870 in Washington, DC.
He died at home of a heart attack at 1063 Michigan Avenue, one of those
addresses that no longer existed. His
obit did reveal that he had constructed the Mullen memorial Library and Science
Building at Catholic University, and the Chapel and Refectory Building at
Trinity College.

A quick check with our Ancestry.com subscription confirmed his
birth date of January 16, 1870; he married his first wife Grace Miller about
1911, but she died just 7 years later, in 1918.
He married his second wife Augusta Braun, 30 years his junior, about
1927. His full name was Charles Joseph
Cassidy, and he was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery. His tombstone appears below.

Still, where was this dam house?
We returned to the database that the DC Historic Preservation Division
has assembled (at a cost of more than $400,000 in taxpayers money for what was
essentially a data entry exercise: more on that later). The problem is that one cannot simply enter “Charles
Cassidy” or even "Cassidy, Charles" in the database as a builder, because nothing will return! How is that possible?

One has to query the MS Access database for every single builder, and
scan down hundreds of pages to see how the database was populated, and you will
discover the problem. You can’t run a “builder’s
career by date” report because our Charles Cassidy had been entered in the
builder’s field four different ways.

The only way to find him was to run four different reports entering: Cassidy, (C. J.) Co or Cassidy (C. J.) Co.
Inc. or Cassidy, C. J. or Cassidy, Chas J.
So that’s why our query on
Charles Cassidy didn’t work. Make sure
you try several attempts, because even one space left out between the C. and J.
will return an error. Watch your periods, too! That’s why
homeowners pay us to research, I guess, because it’s maddening!

I then studied the four different building
lists, and narrowed down houses built of stone, many of which had no address…several
that were entered as 0 Michigan Avenue, NE intrigued me, and then I spotted one
issued on May 21, 1914 (well before the magazine was published) for a stone house measuring 65 feet wide by 33 feet
deep, which seemed to match our picture and the floor plan illustrated above.
It was built at a cost of $4,500.

Then I got the idea to magnify the picture, and there was an address
inscribed on the stone to the right of the door! Alas, it wasn’t legible no matter how hard I
tried.

The permit only noted that it had been built on the southeast corner of
Quincy Street, NE (in the Brookland neighborhood). That was a significant clue, so I went about traveling the
various southeast corners via Google, looking for the house, or where it might
have been. Several potential vacant locations
came up, one of which was the entrance gate to the Franciscan Monastery, the
other a playground on Turkey Thicket Park: could the house have been torn
down?

The bluestone wall of the Cassidy House at Quincy St and Michigan Ave

Then, trolling past an ugly modern apartment complex on Michigan Avenue,
NE at the corner of Quincy Street we hit Bingo!
There on the southeast corner was a low rise bluestone retaining wall
still in existence…with the former central entrance steps filled in with newer stone.

We had our site and our mystery solved!
It appears his house was razed for the apartment complex, who wisely
retained his low rise wall for us historians to use as a clue to the missing
Cassidy house. Maybe some reader will recall when it was razed, or what happened to those elegant blue stones and white marble trim.

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About Me

Paul K. Williams is the President of Historic Congressional Cemetery, and is also the proprietor of Kelsey & Associates, "The House History People," a small firm that specializes in creating a genealogy for a house or building; we research who built it and when, who designed it, who has owned it, and who has lived there and what they did for a living. We focus on the houses in Washington, DC and some other communities across the United States. I've published 19 books with Arcadia, History Press, and Anova Books on neighborhoods in
Washington and my hometown of Skaneateles, NY...titles below. We've
sold more than 45,000 to date! We're publishing Modern SW DC in the fall of 2016, and we are working on a "How to Research Your House History" book.
I've been the author of the popular "Scenes of the Past" column for the
InTowner newspaper beginning in April of 2001.
Visit us at www.WashingtonHistory.com